Critique of Intelligent Design

[TRoutMac]

Originally Posted by Eclogite

Why do you feel life arising through abiogenisis and evolving through natural selection is antithetical to a creator?

For the record, and since you asked, in the abstract I don't personally think that life arising through abiogenesis and evolving through natural selection is necessarily antithetical to a creator.

But let me ask you what might seem like a "sideways" question, if you don't mind:

Do you think that the laws of physics apply the same to manmade systems as they do to biological systems? In other words, do you believe that a "bio-mechanical" system such as a human arm, for example, has to obey exactly the same laws of physics that a robotic arm (engineered and built by humans) has to obey?

Thank you.

[damocles]

Originally Posted by TRoutMac

But let me ask you what might seem like a "sideways" question, if you don't mind:

Do you think that the laws of physics apply the same to manmade systems as they do to biological systems? In other words, do you believe that a "bio-mechanical" system such as a human arm, for example, has to obey exactly the same laws of physics that a robotic arm (engineered and built by humans) has to obey?
.

Human Arm-> made out of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, calcium, potassium, iron, etc.

Robot arm-> made out of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, calcium, potassium, iron, etc.(in different proportions.)

A=A

Here is the cheap trick.

The robot arm has an intelligent designer-> a human.
Ergo the human arm has an intelligent designer.

Logic fault?

Reasoning by superficial and demonstrably false analogy.

Howso?

Set of assumptions.
1. Systems require an intelligent designer and cannot organize without one.
2. Humans are intelligent designers.
3. Humans design robot arms to mimic human arms.
4. Something designed a human arm.
5. That something is an intelligent designer greater than humans since it designed humans to mimic it.
6. Therefore the universe is intelligently designed.

Where the analogy breaks down.
Systems require an intelligent designer and cannot organize without one.

Abiogenesis;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

Abiogenesis (Greek a-bio-genesis, "non biological origins") is, in its most general sense, the hypothetical generation of life from non-living matter. Today the term is primarily used to refer to hypotheses of the origin of life from a primordial soup. Earlier notions of abiogenesis, now more commonly known as spontaneous generation, held that living organisms are generated by decaying organic substances, e.g. that mice spontaneously appear in stored grain or maggots spontaneously appear in meat. (That idea, which has long been known to be incorrect, will be called "Aristotelian abiogenesis" in this article.)

<snip>

Yockey
Information theorist Hubert Yockey argued that chemical evolutionary research raises the question:

Research on the origin of life seems to be unique in that the conclusion has already been authoritatively accepted … . What remains to be done is to find the scenarios which describe the detailed mechanisms and processes by which this happened.
One must conclude that, contrary to the established and current wisdom a scenario describing the genesis of life on earth by chance and natural causes which can be accepted on the basis of fact and not faith has not yet been written. (Yockey, 1977. A calculation of the probability of spontaneous biogenesis by information theory, Journal of Theoretical Biology 67:377–398, quotes from pp. 379, 396.)

Some folks can take hope in Yockey, but do not be decieved;

Origin of Life

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life

Research into the origin of life is a limited field of research despite its profound impact on biology and human understanding of the natural world. Progress in this field is generally slow and sporadic, though it still draws the attention of many due to the gravity of the question being investigated. A few facts give insight into the conditions in which life may have emerged, but the mechanisms by which non-life became life are still elusive.

<snip>

Origin of organic molecules: Miller, Eigen and Wächtershäuser's theories

The Miller-Urey experiment attempts to recreate the chemical conditions of the primitive Earth in the laboratory, and synthesized some of the building blocks of life.The "Miller experiments" (including the original Miller–Urey experiment of 1953, by Harold Urey and his graduate student Stanley Miller) are performed under simulated conditions resembling those thought at the time to have existed shortly after Earth first accreted from the primordial solar nebula. The experiment used a highly reduced mixture of gases (methane, ammonia and hydrogen). However, it should be noted that the exact composition of the prebiotic atmosphere of earth is currently somewhat controversial. Other less reducing gases produce a lower yield and variety. It was once thought that appreciable amounts of molecular oxygen were present in the prebiotic atmosphere, which would have essentially prevented the formation of organic molecules; however, the current scientific consensus is that such was not the case.

The experiment showed that some of the basic organic monomers (such as amino acids) that form the building blocks of modern life can be formed spontaneously. Simple organic molecules are of course a long way from a fully functional self-replicating life form; however, in an environment with no pre-existing life these molecules may have accumulated and provided a rich environment for chemical evolution ("soup theory"). On the other hand, the spontaneous formation of complex polymers from abiotically generated monomers under these conditions is not at all a straightforward process. Further, according to Brooks and Shaw (1973), there is no evidence in the geological record that any soup existed.

There is an abundant amount of evidence of something called self-organizing systems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization

Self-organization refers to a process in which the internal organization of a system, normally an open system, increases automatically without being guided or managed by an outside source. Self-organizing systems typically (though not always) display emergent properties.

<snip>

Overview

Cellular automaton here running Stephen Wolfram's "rule 30", a mathematical construct displaying self-organizationThe most robust and unambiguous examples of self-organizing systems are from physics, where the concept was first noted. Self-organization is also relevant in chemistry, where it has often been taken as being synonymous with self-assembly. The concept of self-organization is central to the description of biological systems, from the subcellular to the ecosystem level. There are also cited examples of "self-organizing" behaviour found in the literature of many other disciplines, both in the natural sciences and the social sciences such as economics or anthropology. Self-organization has also been observed in mathematical systems such as cellular automata.

Sometimes the notion of self-organization is conflated with that of the related concept of emergence. Properly defined, however, there may be instances of self-organization without emergence and emergence without self-organization, and it is clear from the literature that the phenomena are not the same. The link between emergence and self-organization remains an active research question.

Self-organization usually relies on four basic ingredients:

Positive feedback
Negative feedback
Balance of exploitation and exploration
Multiple interactions

(see Cellular automaton for a description of such a system as pure mathematics.)

Now then, the first premise in the false analogy is a possible and proven not true statement.

See the house of cards collapse.

Evidence.

That is the only benchmark. Not assumptions.

Best wishes,

[TRoutMac]

Originally Posted by damocles

Human Arm-> made out of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, calcium, potassium, iron, etc.

Evidence. That is the only benchmark. Not assumptions.

Hmmm. It seems you assumed I was headed in a direction that I was not heading. Next time wait to the see evidence and maybe, just maybe, don't presume to know where I'm going.

Heading someone off at the pass only works if you know what pass they're crossing.

[damocles]

Originally Posted by TRoutMac

Hmmm. It seems you assumed I was headed in a direction that I was not heading. Next time wait to the see evidence and maybe, just maybe, don't presume to know where I'm going.

Heading someone off at the pass only works if you know what pass they're crossing.

Nice try at rhetoric, but useless to negate the analysis of a faulty argument.

One can easily know the way that someone else thinks by the words that someone else writes.

Painter/pigment/image/painting/presentation.

Every word someone writes is the evidence he leaves behind of the way he thinks.

Claiming otherwise after the initial presentation is not factual. That instead is an attempt to defend oneself psychologically from the public admission of either a logic failure or of a mistake in thinking.

Proper evidence of refutation is required to negate the analysis of logic error, which in this case was not supplied.

The analysis stands.

[Southtown]

Damocles, the monomers are akin to crystaline growth correct? Whereabouts would random, organic-like compounds start working together? This is the definition of life as it pertains to the dying: the parts of the body cease to work together. So how can polymerizing molecules that are competing for resources begin to work together in a non-competitive fashion? And why would they reproduce at the expense of resources?

Furthermore, if life is gradually accidented by chemical reactions, what is consciousness? In other words, why must I witness my life, if it can happen on its own?

From the creationist standpoint, I would need mechanisms to consider before I could call abiogenesis a theory.

[damocles]

Originally Posted by Southtown

Damocles, the monomers are akin to crystaline growth correct? Whereabouts would random, organic-like compounds start working together? This is the definition of life as it pertains to the dying: the parts of the body cease to work together. So how can polymerizing molecules that are competing for resources begin to work together in a non-competitive fashion? And why would they reproduce at the expense of resources?

Furthermore, if life is gradually accidented by chemical reactions, what is consciousness? In other words, why must I witness my life, if it can happen on its own?

From the creationist standpoint, I would need mechanisms to consider before I could call abiogenesis a theory.

A monomer is not necessarily thought as a crystal;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomer

In chemistry, a monomer (from Greek mono "one" and meros "part") is a small molecule that may become chemically bonded to other monomers to form a polymer.

Examples of monomers are hydrocarbons such as the alkene and arene (homologous) series. Here hydrocarbon monomers such as styrene and ethene form polymers used as plastics like polystyrene and polyethene.

Amino acids are natural monomers, and polymerize to form proteins. Glucose monomers can also polymerize to form starches, amylopectins and glycogen polymers. In this case the polymerization reaction is known as a dehydration or condensation reaction (due to the formation of water (H2O) as one of the products) where a hydrogen atom and a hydroxyl (-OH) group are lost to form H2O and an oxygen molecule bonds between each monomer unit.

Note that the lower molecular weight compounds built from monomers are also referred to as dimers, trimers, tetramers, pentamers, octamers, 20-mers, etc. if they have 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, or 20 monomer units, respectively. Any number of these monomer units may be indicated by the appropriate prefix, eg, decamer, being a 10-unit monomer chain or polymer. Larger numbers are often stated in English in lieu of Greek. Polymers with relatively low number of units are called oligomers.

Monomers are plastic in that they can bend kink zip and unzip, catalyze and retain structure in a liquid solution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal

A crystal is a solid in which the constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are packed in a regularly ordered, repeating pattern extending in all three spatial dimensions.

Generally, fluid substances form crystals when they undergo a process of solidification. Under ideal conditions, the result may be a single crystal, where all of the atoms in the solid fit into the same lattice or crystal structure but, generally, many crystals form simultaneously during solidification, leading to a polycrystalline solid. For example, most metals encountered in everyday life are polycrystals. Crystals are often symmetrically intergrown to form crystal twins.

While it is theoretically possible to have "life" that is crystalline, the transport of nutrients in such a lattice is extremely problematic. You would be happier as a complex animal/plant if you were made out of limpids.

As to how life organizes in seeming defiance of the laws of thermodynamics?

I read and learn; here I'll give you two examples,

http://www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/u/jjkay/pubs/thesis/2.pdf

In this paper a paradigm is presented for examining living systems. The purpose of the paradigm is to illuminate: 1) Why and how living systems persist in a predictable environment; 2) Why and how living systems develop over time, even if environmental conditions remain unchanged; 3) How the system responds to unpredictable environmental stress. Exploration of current literature indicates that no satisfactory paradigm exists for dealing with these questions and that many basic philosophical and conceptual issues have not been resolved. Examples are: how to define living systems, what level in the hierarchy to examine, whether to use a holistic or reductionist approach. Such concepts as complexity, order, randomness, and organization have not been satisfactorily defined in the context of the above questions.
The cornerstone of the paradigm is to view living systems as the solution to the thermodynamic problem of maximizing the degradation of the incoming solar energy in a changing and unpredictable environment. Using a scenario based on Prigogine et al and Wicken's work it is argued that the solution to this problem is the development of systems (chemical factories) which are joined together in a supersystem. The supersystem degrades the incoming solar energy by producing and then breaking down molecular structures. The chemical factories have four common behaviors: a self-construction and death cycle, reproduction, evolution and adaptation.

The problem of maximizing energy degradation while maintaining an internally stable system which can survive in a changing and unpredictable environment places several conflicting pressures on the systems. Ecosystems, which are systems made up of primary producers and other inter-dependant components, would respond to these pressures through the development of components which tend to minimize their dissipation rates. Ecosystems therefore must increase energy degradation by increasing the number and types of components, rather than the rate of degradation of each individual component. An ecosystem grows through the introduction and reproduction of new components. The ecosystem evolves and adapts through changes in the interactions of the components.

In order to increase the degradation rate of the entire ecosystem as many of the components as possible should be in their early stages of development. This hypothesis leads to the conclusion that the components will be continually cycling through a growth, reproduction, death process. Because the predictability of the microenvironment of other components must be preserved, the reproductive process must produce offspring similar, from the perspective of the ecosystems, to the original components. This means that there must be some sort of pre-programming of the development process of the components. The components of ecosystems are living systems which share the same pre-programming and are the highest level in the system's hierarchy which spontaneously die. Together such living systems form a class called a species.

Two hypothesises about species are presented. The first is that an individual of the species will survive long enough to insure the survival of offspring to replace it. The second is that the species as a whole will maximize its contribution to the degradation of energy by producing as many offspring as possible, who will survive to reproduce. Each species represents a unique solution to the problem of surviving and reproducing in it's particular microenvironment. These two hypotheses define the goals of individuals and species.

For each set of environmental conditions there will exist at least one system optimum operating point, a point where the functioning of the system represents an optimum tradeoff between the goals driving the system. Self-organization is the process by which the system modifies its internal structure and function so as to move its operating point to the optimum operating point and maintain it there. Self-organization, as seen is this paradigm, is the response of living systems to thermodynamic and environmental pressures.

The process of self-organization makes use of information stored by the system about past pressures as well as information about current situation. Just how this is done is not clear, but the work of Saunders and Ho and Prigogine provide us with some clues and the indication that it is a stochastic process which is not restricted to the random mutation of genes. One thing is clear, the diversity of environmental pressures, both past and present, at the species level, would lead us to expect there to be many kinds of species present in a mature ecosystem.

Any analysis of self-organization must begin by identifying the system and its environment, the components of the system and their microenvironment, and the supersystem. The goals of the system, and the environmental factors which have an influence on the system's ability to reach these goals, must be identified. In the context of ecosystems, the paradigm allows these steps to be undertaken.

The next step is to identify the optimum operating point. Then an evaluation of the ability of the system to attain and maintain the optimum operating point can be carried out. Analysis of both stress-response and health involve two separate factors. The first is the change in, or desirability, of the optimum operating point. The second is the ability of the system to attain and maintain the optimum operating point in the given environmental situation. While the paradigm provides some insight into the qualitative and empirical aspects of the analysis, quantitative analysis awaits the development of mathematical measures of the thermodynamic functioning of ecosystems and the relationship between environmental factors, species behavior and the thermodynamics of ecosystems.

The development of a quantitative theory based on the paradigm presented here will not be easy. Much theoretical work remains before ecosystem thermodynamic measures can be developed. The science of thermodynamics is not adequate in its present form to deal with living systems. In particular the concepts of entropy, exergy, availability, and work need further development, perhaps using information theory, before they can be adequately applied to living systems. As well measures of available work and available nutrients in ecosystems must be constructed. Until this development is accomplished, it is impossible to build the required thermodynamic models of ecosystems and species.

Development of these concepts and measures are part of a more general problem in theoretical thermodynamics. (Kay 1984) This general problem centers on clarifying the relationship between information theory, statistical mechanics, and thermodynamics. Tribus (1961), Tribus, Shannon, Evans, (1966), Costa de Beauregard and Tribus (1974) and Jaynes (1963, 1965) have argued that statistical mechanics, the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, and the concepts of heat and work have their root in information theory rather than physics. Until these issues are settled it is difficult to generalize the concept of entropy sufficiently so that non-equilibrium thermodynamics can be applied directly to macroscopic systems.

These problems aside, attempts to validate (or rather more correctly invalidate) the hypotheses generated using the paradigm may have to wait a long time. The problem is that there is little consensus about which phenomena are actually exhibited by ecosystems. Also, the type of data required for thermodynamic models is scarce. Accumulating the empirical information required to resolve either of these problems might take decades.

However, several tests of the hypotheses are possible. Those phenomena which are generally accepted as being associated with ecosystem development and stress-response can be compared with the phenomena predicted by the hypotheses. Examples of the development/stress-response of specific ecosystems can be qualitatively examined for consistency with the hypotheses. Information Theory measures of ecosystem structure can be developed and specific predictions can be made and tested. (Kay 1984)

The paradigm, hypothesis and conceptual ideas presented in this paper provide some insight into the driving forces behind ecosystem development. In particular the role of the second law of thermodynamics is clarified. The conceptual problems associated with order, organization, complexity, stability, health and stress-response are dealt with. The philosophical dichotomy associated with the community vs. population and holistic vs. reductionist paradigms have been resolved. All these perspectives play a role in the paradigm presented here. In fact Regier and Rapport (1978) identify ten different approaches to examining ecosystems. Eight of these approaches are incorporated in the approach presented in this paper

This paper shows how ecologies organize in seeming violation to local entropy by seeking an explanation in self-organizing system inter-competitiveness/co-operation.

http://www.mdpi.org/fis2005/F.15.paper.pdf

Abstract: Conditions of applicability of the laws established for thermodynamic entropy do not necessarily fit to the entropy defined for information. Therefore, one must handle carefully the informational conclusions derived by mathematical analogies from the laws that hold for thermodynamic entropy.Entropy, and the arrow of its change are closely related to the arrows of the change of symmetry and of orderliness. Symmetry and order are interpreted in different ways instatistical thermodynamics, in symmetrology, and in evolution; and their relation toeach other is also equivocal. Evolution is meant quite different in statistical physicsand in philosophical terms. Which of the different interpretations can be transferred tothe description of information? Entropy, introduced by Shannon on mathematical analogy borrowed fromthermodynamics, is a mean to characterise information. One is looking for a possibly most general information theory. Generality of the sought theory can be qualified byits applicability to all (or at least the more) kinds of information. However, I express doubts, whether entropy is a property to characterise all kinds of information. Entropy plays an important role in information theory. This concept has been borrowed from physics, more precisely from thermodynamics, and applied toinformation by certain formal analogies. Several authors, having contributed to the FIS discussion and published papers in the periodical Entropy, emphasized the alsoexisting differences in contrast to the analogies. Since the relations of entropy - as applied in information theory - to symmetry are taken from its physical origin, there isworth to take a glance at the ambiguous meaning of this term in physics in its relation to order and symmetry, respectively.
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This paper seeks to address the contradictions that arise when the entropic functions in thermo-dynamics laws conflict with the inherent observed local concentrations of enthalpic inbalances(life) which defy straightforward direct one to one correspondence information theory analysis. Instead the authors argue that the intepretation of biological systems must take into account a special subset of conditions that fit the general paradign of information theory as applied to thermodynamics.

What free time I have goes into reading and testing any concept I come across. Now that doesn't mean that self-awareness is not "spiritual" or that there are not profound questions as to why we are here. But the how is rather straightforwardly physical and not that complicated or beyond our understanding.

Best wishes;

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by damocles

A monomer is not necessarily thought as a crystal;

___I beg to differ; everything is representable by crytalline geometry.Structure is everything; shape is everything; geometry is everything; relational interconnectedness is everything . Whether your first principle is physical or metaphysical, it has geometry...it has form...it has pattern. The pattern of 'proofs' of the existence of God is the pattern of irreproduceability.
___Here is a suggested experiment: You bring your intelligent creator & a can of gas & I'll bring my fire suit & a can of gas & we'll pour the gas on each other & strike a match.

[damocles]

Originally Posted by Turtle

___I beg to differ; everything is representable by crytalline geometry.Structure is everything; shape is everything; geometry is everything; relational interconnectedness is everything . Whether your first principle is physical or metaphysical, it has geometry...it has form...it has pattern. The pattern of 'proofs' of the existence of God is the pattern of irreproduceability.
___Here is a suggested experiment: You bring your intelligent creator & a can of gas & I'll bring my fire suit & a can of gas & we'll pour the gas on each other & strike a match.

??????????????????????????????????????????????????

1. I agree about geometry.
2. I think of monomers as "plastics", not as rigid as crystallline solids. so maybe my definition is a tad different when it comes to "plastic?"

monomer;



A single molecule that has the ability to combine with identical or similar molecules, a process also known as polymerization.

http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/e.../m0030547.html[

One of the things that characterize a monomer that allows it to have the "plastic" property is that it can usually form chains of sub-units instead of stacked three diomensional lattices of subunits(such as you might find in crystals) which causes stranding into polymers-such as DNA/RNA for example.

Crystal;



I know it is a slight distinction in definition, but it is a geometrical one.

I am puzzled that you would think I was silly enough to douse myself with gasoline and let myself be set on fire in support of the intelligent design hypothesis.

Especially since if I were to test the hypothesis to verify the claims for it, I know I could probably find some other means to test by negation the hypothesis.

Results cannot be reported if you kill yourself.

I'm on the rational side of that argument, here, I think...

If you intend to hold the experiment you propose, I will be the one holding the fire extinguisher to put both you and your ID co-experimenter out after you set each other alight.

Best wishes;

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by damocles

2. I think of monomers as soluble plastics, not as rigid as crystallline solids. so maybe my definition is a tad different when it comes to "plastic?"
I know it is a slight distinction in definition, but it is a geometrical one.
Best wishes;

___Ahhh yes; defining plastic. I accept & understand the definition you adhere to in regard to chemical authorities. Nonetheless, a fire by any other name burns as hot. Got a match?

[damocles]

Originally Posted by Turtle

___Ahhh yes; defining plastic. I accept & understand the definition you adhere to in regard to chemical authorities. Nonetheless, a fire by any other name burns as hot. Got a match?

To be clear;

I don't support Intelligent Design as a hypothesis.

The burden of proof hasn't even begun to be met by the ID crowd in the form of a defined testable hypothesis beyond the "claim" that the universe is too complex to have formed by itself. There are no tests or observations to which they can point conclusively as evidence of a possible explanation verified by a fail test that the hypothesis has withstood. Nor have they run such a test-ever.

I'm one of those malcontents who asks the ID hypothesizers,"Where are the predictive hypothesis' conclusions tested to negation to see if the outcomes were as expected?"

I don't smoke.